


Future Dictator and Small Agriculturist

by Bonnie (CatsAndHounds)



Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M, Sci-Fi, untrustworthy pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 16:25:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5633281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatsAndHounds/pseuds/Bonnie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Passionate Dictator/Subtle Farmer OTP<br/>Awkward Farmer Cuddling</p>
            </blockquote>





	Future Dictator and Small Agriculturist

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DNA (CatsAndHounds)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatsAndHounds/gifts).



“Well, I guess the tomatoes could be doing better,” Ms. Blackhorse said. She had her tablet clutched to her chest like a shield. 

“Hmm. Living would be a good start,” Pen said. He sipped his tea with what David judged to be not nearly enough concern considering the awful scene that lay before them. There were seven rows of little, dying sprouts where there ought to have been seven rows of healthy, blooming plants. It was something in the way of a tragedy.

“What did I do wrong?” David said. “I followed all the instructions.”

“Unless the instructions were for how to _kill_ tomatoes, I’m not sure that’s true.”

“Stuff it, Pen.”

“Sir,” Ms. Blackhorse said in a placating tone --that is, more than the baseline placating tone people who weren’t Dad, Deanna, or Pen took anytime they spoke to David anyway. Sometimes David suspected that there’d been a memo sent round before he came to this colony. _Tips for Dealing with the High Martial Lord’s Son: 1. Placate 2. Use nearby objects as shields._ It wasn’t as if he was the family member who put people to death without trials. That was all Deanna. “These are living things. Sometimes they happen to have weakness we haven’t predicted and--”

Pen, whom David knew to be slightly infamous in the agricultural division for not checking his messages in a timely manner, often missing things like _important memos_ , scoffed quietly.

“So help me, Pen, _I will behead you_ ,” David said in his best impression of Dad. Ms. Blackhorse inhaled sharply. Pen sighed. David would say he sounded used to it, but he’d never particularly reacted to it even when they first met.

“Each row was a different variety, sir. They couldn’t have all been bad seeds. We just saw healthy plants from the same stocks in the next cell over. Besides which, this doesn’t look like any genetic failing or disease.”

“Then what does it look like?”

To David’s surprise, Pen hesitated. David raised his eyebrows at him. Pen sucked on his teeth and said, “Salt.”

“What?”

“It looks like salt burns. As if they’ve had quite a lot of salt put on them.”

“I did not salt my plants.”

“Technically speaking--”

“No ‘technically speaking’! I did not salt them. I followed the instructions. Growing medium, seeds, nutrient wash--”

“Sir--”

“ _Harold, stop interrupting him,_ ” Ms. Blackhorse hissed from behind her tablet.

“--light cycler, and three daily periods of the acceler --”

“Nutrient wash is salts, sir,” Pen said louder.

David stopped. “What?”

“There is a mix of various salts in the wash because they carry minerals which the plants need. If they get too much of the food, they can be damaged or killed.”

David blinked, then threw his hands up in the air. Ms. Blackhorse ducked behind Pen.

“It’s… a fairly common mistake,” she said from behind whatever safety she thought Pen’s diminutive stature offered. She did very literally have to duck behind him, tall as she personally was. “First years tend to think adding a little extra will give their crops a boost but--”

“So I’m basically a child and killed everything because I rounded up?”

“Well, I didn’t-- I didn’t call you a child, sir. I would never.”

Pen’s face spoke silently about who would call David a child. David made a rude gesture at him which only succeeded in making Ms. Blackhorse squeak faintly.

“You did try, sir,” Pen offered. “When your sister was here, she never did.”

“ _Thank goodness_ ,” Ms. Blackhorse whispered not quietly enough. David restrained from glaring at her as it would probably give her a heart attack, but she also had a point. Deanna, dearly as he loved and looked up to her, was not something he would have wished on the agriculturalists. Pen probably would have been shot the first day. David could admit that that would have been a pity, Pen dying before he’d ever had a chance to be entirely unbothered by David’s presence while David was nothing but bothered.

“My sister was and is to learn military skills for the good of the nation,” David said. “She had no reason to try farming during her stay.” He, on the other hand, was supposed to be learning the ways of infrastructure. How to actually keep a military power running. Banking control had been boring but easy, media creation and distribution had been fairly exciting --turns out there were a large number of malcontents who thought that they could just make their own distribution channels, as if they would have more information about anything than the proper authorities--, and internal security had been boring and exciting in waves, depending on what the locals had been upset about any given day.

Agriculture, though, was kicking his ass and doing so in a boring way. David could hardly believe how badly the year was already going, everything from his foot getting stepped on and broken by a mammal kept for its perspiration (of all things) to accidentally mixing a batch of protein bars that hospitalized four people. Now, after two weeks of watching Ms. Blackhorse singlehandedly grow enough vegetation to feed Deanna’s battalion for a month, David had ruined tomatoes in under 24 hours.

And as David’s personal guide for the various parts of the agricultural division --one had been forced upon him at every colony so far. “Someone your age to show you around, sir,” like he was about to become buddies with random people assigned to babysit him and keep him from ruining equipment--, Pen had been there for all of it. David supposed that would be enough to make anyone think David was an incompetent child.

“I’m going to bed,” David said bitterly.

“It’s barely past midday,” Pen said as Ms. Blackhorse said, “Very good, sir. You need your rest, I’m sure, sir.”

“Yeah, _Harold,_ ” David said. “I need my rest. Killing plants is exhausting work.” And with that, he left the cell and stalked out of the tomato branch.

He caught a lift down past the various other vegetable levels in solitude, but at the door to the rest of the compound, he was joined by the two bodyguards Dad had demanded he tote around when away from Deanna. Their names were Kent and Gerrick, and while Kent occasionally did have facial expressions and vocal inflections that suggested she might have things like thoughts and emotions, Gerrick might as well have been an android, for all that Dad had banned those years ago. Neither of them ever spoke much.

Because of this, David had gotten into the bad habit of filling the silence when they were following him around.

“So, update on whether I am the most useless temporary agriculturist to have ever lived,” David said conversationally as he stomped towards the trolley system that would take him towards his living quarters. “Yes, yes I am. I killed plants by feeding them.”

“Sir?” Kent said.

“You heard me, Kent,” David said, spinning around to look at her as he kept walking backward. “I killed those leafy things we get food from by feeding them _slightly_ too much.”

“Sorry, sir,” Kent said.

“It was only a few milliliters more per plant because I thought, hey, that’s such a finicky number. Why not round up? Couldn’t hurt to feed the food.” David spun back around in order to board the trolley car. “But apparently yes it can. It burns them. Because we’re not supposed to get salt on plants except for when we are and only in exact amounts. Which usually there is a computer to do, but I can’t just skip to using the automated system without understanding what it does myself. Apparently.” David looked around and found they were the only ones to have boarded the car. That suited him just fine. No having to have Kent and Gerrick remove anyone. “Salt,” he said again, still not sure he believed this. “Did you know this, Kent?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, that makes me feel better, but then again you haven’t been trying have you? You’re in the bodyguard line of work. What about you, Gerrick? Your grandmother is from this colony, Kent told me. Know anything about salting plants?”

“No, sir.”

“There’s that, then,” David sighed, and he took a seat near the front of the empty car.

He spent the trip to his quarters watching fields of grains go past. Ms. Blackhorse’s greenhouse --and similar greenhouses across the colony-- could produce large quantities of vegetables from a relatively compact building, but grains of many sorts were cultivated over large swaths of the planet at a slightly slower though still unnatural rate. Yesterday the way between the greenhouse and his quarters had been lined with juvenile green stalks; today everything was a mature golden, and he could see the large harvesters in the distance, making their way through the crops.

“Who would ever want to be a farmer anyway?” David said.

“Not enough people, sir. That’s why there’s the recruitment program.”

“True, I suppose. Though I can’t imagine Ms. Blackhorse doing anything other than raising plants. I think she must have wanted to. Maybe Pen wanted to be something different, but he wouldn’t have been assigned here if he’d had any better skills. I haven’t seen any evidence of better skills.” And that was a lie. Pen had some very good organizational skills in addition to a good knowledge of all things food production. He was also amazing at driving David nuts by being either non-committal or quietly judgemental.

“Yes, sir,” Kent said evenly. Entirely evenly. David couldn’t find anything to justify even to himself as Kent being disrespectful, but some small voice in his head told him she had some thoughts about David’s rant.

Kent was one of the better bodyguards David had ever had, though, so he stifled any retaliatory urges and stilled his tongue for the rest of the ride.

In the end, David did actually got to bed, once he was safely inside the building set aside for him. He dropped onto it face first, fully clothed and sighed heavily into the duvet. He fell asleep imagining ordering the plants to attention like a squad of soldiers while Pen and Ms. Blackhorse watched in awe.

\----

He woke to his room’s intercom beeping. It took him a moment to identify the sound as that, first patting at his ear link despite the fact that the two didn’t sound alike, but he did manage to lurch up and over to the system mounted by the door.

“What?” he croaked, his vocal chords having gone to sleep too.

“Sir,” said Kent over the system. “You have a visitor.”

“Since when does anyone visit me?”

“Now, apparently, sir.”

“ _Who?_ ”

“It’s Harold Pen, sir.”

David pressed his forehead to the wall next to the intercom. “Are people even allowed to visit me, Kent? What’s your bodyguard-slash-babysitter handbook say about that?”

“Generally, no one is allowed to come to you unless you’ve invited them, short of an emergency or under your father or sister’s orders.”

“So why are you calling me about Pen?”

“I’d thought it best to check that he hadn’t been invited, sir. Now I know he hasn’t, I’ll have him leave.”

David lifted his head away from the wall just so he could thunk back to it. “Kent?”

“Sir?”

“I have invited Mr. Pen to visit me this--” David checked the time. He’d managed quite a nap, actually. “--evening. He’s a little early, but you may let him come up.”

“As you say, sir,” Kent said. 

“Thank you, Kent,” David said, and he allowed himself a few moments more to confer with the wall about what he would actually do next before straightening and exiting his sleeping quarters.

Downstairs in the first sitting room, Pen was standing with two disposable cups. David could only imagine they were filled with more bitter herbal tea.

“One not enough for you?” David said, and he sat down in the nearest chair.

“Two is too much for me. One might be enough for each of us.”

David considered the last five times he’d tried tea from Pen. 100% disaster rate. “Sure, _Harold_ ,” he said.

Pen winced but brought the tea over. He handed one to David and then sat down in the chair adjacent without asking or waiting for an invitation. He wasn’t _technically speaking_ supposed to do that any more than he was supposed to drop by for an unexpected visit but. 

Well, David wasn’t going to say anything. He knew damn well _why_ he wasn’t, and apparently so did Kent if that intercom conversation was anything to go by, but the point was that David had very rarely curbed Pen’s disregard for deference in the past five months of agricultural torture.

“What’s today’s assault on my taste buds?”

“Mint.”

“And?”

Pen frowned. “Water? Hot water.”

“That’s a little simpler than your usual monstrosities.”

“Well, you keep calling them monstrosities, sir.”

“Well,” David said and left it at that because he wasn’t going to apologize for the truth. He took a sip and found it was indeed just mint tea. Quite nice, really. “Anyway, why did I invite you over, exactly?”

“I came because I thought you should know that the tomatoes weren’t your fault.”

“What?”

“Laura and I checked them over after you stormed off--”

“That was not storming. You have not seen storming. Meet my dad sometime.”

“I’d love to, sir. But as for the plants, when we checked them over, we found that they were encrusted with residue from the nutrient bath. You may have put too much in, sir, but it still shouldn’t have dried all over the leaves like that. There was a malfunction in the spraying system that you couldn’t have prevented short of taking it apart yourself.”

“So, I didn’t kill them.”

“No, sir.”

“Well, that’s… nice. Glad rounding up a couple milliliters wasn’t the problem.”

“No, sir. That may have had a small effect on the produce rate, but it would not have killed them. We thought you must have dumped quite a lot in.”

“Not a total idiot,” David said, and he drank some more tea. “I mean, yeah, kind of an idiot. You’ve seen all the idiot, but I didn’t do that.”

Pen sighed. “I don’t think you’re an idiot, sir.”

David scoffed. “You couldn’t say it if you did. Even you know that.”

“But I wouldn’t lie and say I didn’t. I’d avoid answering the question, which in this case would be easy since you didn’t ask one. I could have just said something like, ‘Everybody makes mistakes, sir.’ I freely offered my honest opinion that you’re not an idiot this time.”

David thought this over. For a moment, he considered testing this. He could, couldn’t he? Ask Pen questions about what he thought of David and _Laura_ and farming and even the nation. See what got direct answers and what he avoided. It was tempting. Dad would do it.

What David found was that he didn’t really want to. He hadn’t enjoyed learning interrogation during his security time much anyway.

“Okay. So somehow despite me being awful at every single thing I’ve tried here, which must all seem easy to you, you don’t think I’m an idiot. That’s more gracious than I thought you were, Pen. “

“I won’t hold that against you, sir.” David laughed at this, and Pen actually smiled. David had to look elsewhere in the room.

Pen smiling was an uncommon bird. It was for the best, really. Every time, David’s chest tightened and he found himself thinking about how easy it would to just grab Pen and do as he liked. Literally no one would stop him, and it was exactly the method Dad and Deanna tended to employ whenever they wanted something or someone. Perks of position. The way Dad had gotten that position in the first place. Take what you like.

The problem was, David had never really liked things that didn’t like _him_ to begin with. Vain, he guessed. The consequence of this was having all the desire possible for Pen and at the same time hating him for not desiring David back. He could admit this made him moody in a way that didn’t help him seem mature and reasonable.

“Something wrong with the tea, sir?”

David said, “What?”

“Your face, sir.”

“My face.”

“You looked unhappy.”

“Yeah, well. I am unhappy.” David took a gulp of the tea. It was cool enough that this didn’t cause him massive amounts of pain, but it was still slightly hotter than he should be chugging like that. His voice came out a little raspy. “Thinking about unhappy things,” he said, and he swirled his tea around in its cup just to feel the liquid spin inside.

“Anything I can help with?”

“Not really.”

“Sorry,” Pen said, and David looked up at him for it.

“Sympathy because I’m unhappy or apology because you can’t help?”

“Both, I guess.”

“Then ‘thank you’ for the sympathy and ‘it’s not your fault’ for the can’t help.”

“‘You’re welcome’ and ‘I know’, then, sir.” Pen said and then more quietly, he added, “It’d be easier to know what to do in other circumstances.”.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if you were someone else, for a start.”

“Someone else.” Like Ms. Blackhorse, maybe?

“In a different position, I mean.”

David found that this conversation had taken an unexpected route. He couldn’t say he missed the ‘small talk about farming’ route, but he could say he had no idea where this was going. He didn’t know yet if he enjoyed that or not. 

“If I was in a different position, what help could you offer to me saying that I’m unhappy without giving you any information?”

Pen stared at David, discomfort splashed across his face, and David couldn’t muster any sympathy for that. He’d started it. It was one thing for David to go fishing but Pen had basically invited him to ask.

After a moment, Pen said, “Sir, you like to say things to me like ‘I will behead you’ and ‘I’m assembling a firing squad for tomorrow at dawn.’”

“Yeah, so? I could.” The firing squad would be easier. Kent and Derrick were excellent shots, but no one really traveled with axes. Though, it was a farming planet. Who knew?

“I know you could. I’m just wondering how likely that is, exactly.”

David frowned, thought about how he hadn’t actually thought that over before, and then did think it over. “Not very, really. If we’re being honest, it’s only as likely as you doing something treasonous is. You planning anything treasonous?”

“I’m not sure.”

“‘Not sure’? Wow, don’t say that where Kent can hear you. How can you not be sure?”

“Because you could declare anything treasonous, and I don’t know how well you’re going to take this,” Pen said, and with that, he stood up, walked over to David, and leaned down to put his arms around David’s shoulders.

It took David a moment to realize it was a hug and not a pathetic attempt at a fighting hold. When he did, he almost laughed. It was not a great hug. They were too uneven in position, David was still holding his cup between them, and what little of Pen’s body was in contact with his own was tense, like he was expecting some kind of retaliation or injury.

But all the same, holy shit. David did end up laughing, not because it was an awkward, crappy hug but because it was a hug at all.

“Since when do you like me enough to hug me?”

“I’ve never said I didn’t like you, sir,” Pen said, and well, wasn’t that a non-answer? Pen had just admitted he’d rather use those than truths that would get him in trouble or outright lies, and while David had planned on not testing that, he couldn’t stop himself now.

“Pen, do you like me?” he asked, finding a sudden cheerfulness. He would never have asked that before now because before now, it had never occurred to him that he might get the answer he wanted. “As a person, do you find my company enjoyable?”

Pen’s arms started to slide away from David’s shoulders, but before the hug could be broken entirely, David wrapped his free hand around Pen’s hip and held him in place. Pen’s hold would have made for terrible fighting, but David could think of several ways to knock Pen on his ass or break a bone here. He didn’t especially want to, but he might if he didn’t get an answer. Just because he hadn’t enjoyed interrogation very much, that didn’t mean he’d been as bad at it as he was at this agriculture business. And he’d only said no _execution_ without treason.

“Sir,” Pen sighed, clearly uncomfortable.

“Yes, Harold?” David said.

“Well, firstly.” Pen’s voice changed from worried discomfort to mild annoyance. “I don’t really use that name.”

“ _Laura_ Blackhorse does.”

“She’s my older brother’s friend from school, sir. She thinks it’s strange to call me by last name and vice versa. I’ve given up asking her to stop.”

Well, David could ask. He wouldn’t even have to threaten her. Just looking at her made her scared. “Fine, Pen. What’s second then?”

“Secondly, yes. I do. I find your company enjoyable.”

David grinned widely and smothered it into Pen’s shoulder. Yes, he definitely liked that answer.

“That’s nice,” David said, though it came out too muffled and he lifted his head again. “It’s nice. Thought you were just putting up with me because you didn’t have any other option.”

“I don’t.”

“Well, no, you don’t, but at least it’s not an awful option for you, even if it’s the only one. Though, Deanna likes to say there’s always another option.”

“And what’s that?”

“You wouldn’t like it. You were trying to get assurance you wouldn’t have to die just now.”

Pen huffed. David thought briefly back to media control and felt that he ought to clarify, given the way people thought of his sister.

“She doesn’t just mean for other people. She means anyone has the right to choose death, even her. She always has some means of a good death at hand, poison usually. Likes to remind herself that she can get out of meetings and other obligations if she really can’t bear it.”

“Is she a cheerful person?”

“Very. Comparing awful things to dying is a good way to stay positive.”

“There’s... a logic to that,” Pen said, and to David’s delight, his arms finally settled back down around David’s shoulders. This was still the saddest example of a hug he’d ever experienced --and again, media malcontents were laughably wrong. Dad and Deanna were perfectly loving people. They hugged him all the time.-- but it was a start.

“I’ve always found it comforting. You always have at least two options. For the record, though, I’m about to give you three,” David said as he pulled the hand still hold his cup from between them and simply tossed the cup away from the chair. There wasn’t a table nearby but there _were_ people to clean up for him.

“Three options?”

“Yes.”

“What are they?”

“One, death. Always the standard option. You can do it yourself or I can call Kent and Gerrick up. Kent’s a more direct shot, but she also makes faces when she has to kill someone, so you might prefer to risk Gerrick and his tendency to aim below the belt.”

“Kind of you.”

“Two, you get transferred to some other job and I get a new guide for my stay here. I can’t really put up with how things are anymore, and since I can’t leave, you’ll have to. I can’t promise it won’t be awful but I won’t do anything to ensure it is.” He _also_ wouldn’t do anything to ensure it wasn’t, and David had some idea that getting shucked by the High Martial Lord’s son was not a career builder. It’d happened before. Threats weren’t really the route he wanted to go here, though, so he kept this to himself. He was aiming for being found preferable to career change, not preferable to career death, regardless of the truth of the matter.

“But what’s my third option? Neither of those sounds very good.”

David’s smile was starting to hurt his face. “Not even the part about getting sent away from me?”

“You’re fishing for compliments at this point.”

“I’m vain. I like compliments,” David said. “Even if they’re not great ones, so don’t worry about being eloquent.”

“What’s my third option?” Pen said, sounding just a little impatient.

David tried out a few wordings in his head and found he didn’t like any of them, so instead he turned his head and placed his lips against the side of Pen’s neck in a kiss while using his hand to pull Pen’s hips closer until was forced to either lean against David like a plank or climb on top of him. Pen chose the latter, and David bit his neck in triumph. 

“Oh,” Pen said faintly. “Okay, I mean.”

David hummed against skin inquiringly.

“We can go with option three,” Pen said.

David snorted and then pulled his mouth clear just enough to say, “Gathered that, farmer boy.”

**Author's Note:**

> *throws hands in the air*
> 
> I don't even know, DNA. Happy New Year!


End file.
